Abstract
We must see that dispositions are actual, though their manifestations may not be. It is an elementary confusion to think of unmanifesting dispositions as unactualized possibilia, though that may characterize unmanifested manifestations. If a tree stands in the woods and no one is around to climb it, is it climb-up-able?
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Notes
Also see Thompson et al (1992).
For example, Hilbert (1987), Edward Averill (1985), and Mohan Matthen (1988).
For example, Hardin (1988), Boghossian and Velleman (1989), and Landesman (1989).
Thompson also contrasts his position with traditional dispositional accounts, accounts that Thompson insists get the phenomenology of color experience wrong. I’,ll return to Thompson’,s criticism of Dispositionalism below (§1.3.)
See also Byrne and Hilbert (1997) and Hilbert and Kalderon (2000).
This is misleading. Although normal human observers have three broad band sensors, there are differences among normal observers concerning these sensors. Consequently, metameric matches are relative not only to conditions, but also to observers.
I thank Kelly Jolley for this example.
A similar problem arises due to the effects of different viewing conditions. A reflectance will map onto the B region of color space, and thus be blue, only if certain viewing conditions are specified as standard. I should also point out that my account faces a similar difficulty. In the next chapter I argue that the color incompatibility claim is false, and it is certainly open to Hilbert to do the same.
Averill offers a similar argument (1985: 288-9).
The example is due to Edward Averill (1985: 289-91).
This is the option I favor: the objects have the same color, though they might also have different super-human-colors. See Chapter 7 for a more detailed story about how this might go.
I argue in Chapter 4 that this consequence, though prima facie implausible, is in fact acceptable. Here I will be content to show that Relationalism is no more plausible.
It is also important to note that there’,s a difference between how our concepts would apply in a particular situation, and how our concepts might change in a particular situation. My interest is in our color concepts and those properties they pick out. Pollyanna and I have no interest in alternative concepts we might one day employ. I leave the task of predicting the future to others. (My thanks to Kelly Jolley for helping me to get clear on this important point.).
As I mentioned earlier, Anthropocentric Realism has an additional difficulty that I will discuss further in Chapter 7, §3. For Hilbert there are colors, blue objects, and shades of blue. But objects that are blue, and even the same shade of blue, will often not be the same color. Indeed, blue is not a color at all according to Hilbert. Shades of blue are not colors either. This is a surprising — even a shocking — consequence. According to Anthropocentric Realism blue objects, and even objects of the same shade of blue, may be radically different in color. Indeed, one such object may be far more similar in color to a green object than it is to an object that is exactly the same shade of blue. Hilbert’,s account is thus revisionary of our use of color predicates. So not only is his account not ontologically serious, it is not semantically serious either. And insofar as we are revisionary about color predication (insofar as we fail to be semantically serious), to that extent we also change the subject.
There is, of course, a worry about appeals to intrinsic features of experience. This is just the qualia problem. But as we’,ll see in the next chapter, dispositional accounts can also avoid appealing to such features.
This distinction is perhaps most clearly recognized by Evans (1985), McDowell (1985), and Wiggins (1987).
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Martin, C., Anonymous (2002). Why Colors Are Not Relational Properties. In: Rediscovering Colors. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 88. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0562-3_3
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